False Euthanasia
by Herald Aros
Summary: the good die young : number 4510 [Naminé . Riku Replica . Axel . Roxas]


False Euthanasia

_the good die young _-:- _number 4510_

_**.four) for Creation**_

He's nothing, nothing, hardly even existing, but he's there. She's not supposed to be there, but she is anyway; Zexion's doing an experiment, and he needs her here. She can see the others, fetuses drowned in the oddly-colored solutions of tanks barely bigger than her forearm, but this one's not dead, not yet.

All his vital signs are displayed on the left; on the right is a number, a short, insignificant number, and that's all he is. Four-five-one-zero is his name and his being. He's just another experiment to Vexen, an experiment with a low chance of success.

She places her small, pale hand on the tank, watches as his fingers twitch, ever so slightly. She's enthralled by that single movement, leaning forward to see if he does it again. He doesn't, not until she presses her lips to the glass, and then he stirs even more. It looks like he's trying to stretch.

Zexion pulls her away, taking notes.

She comes back an hour later. The tanks are still there, but there are no dead fetuses in them; the fetuses have been replaced by live babes, all of them sporting the same silver hair in now-clear liquid that surrounds them. All of them appear to be sleeping.

The tank labeled four-five-one-zero is bigger than all the others, though: there's no baby in it, but instead a young child. He, like the others, has his eyes closed, but he twitches regularly. His stats are better than all the others; he has a worktable all to himself. She smiles.

This time when she kisses the tank, his eyes open. It's just a crack, but she stares in awe at him. Zexion hasn't let her in this time, she's on her own, so she doesn't pull away. Instead, she presses closer to the glass, watching him carefully.

Vexen comes back only moments later, prying the witch off the tank and giving her a heated glare. He releases her only after lecturing her on the importance of controlled variables and sterile environments. She nods meekly, quiet the entire time, and makes her way back to her room quickly. She doesn't forget about the boy behind the glass.

_**.five) for Restlessness**_

He comes to her the second time. He looks barely seven, hair choppy and messy, fingers in his mouth, eyes far too big for his face. He looks rather odd, actually, and she stifles a laugh when he stumbles towards her.

"Mommy?" he asks her, grabbing onto her dress with the hand he's not sucking on. "Mommy?"

She frowns at him, shaking her head. "No, I'm not your mother."

He frowns back at her and pulls his hand out of his mouth. "Mommy?"

She wonders if that's the only word he knows. Perhaps her interference has stunted his growth, like Vexen suggested? She has no doubt that this child is four-five-one-zero.

"I'm Naminé," she tells him. "Can you say that? Na-mi-né."

All of a sudden his eyes light up. He nods enthusiastically. "Na-mi-né! Na-mi-né!"

She chuckles, ruffling his hair. "That's me."

"Mommy Naminé!" He shouts gleefully. Her eyes go wide and she covers his mouth, eyes locking on the door. If someone heard him...

"Well well, the witch has a brat."

Her breath quickens as she turns; Axel smirks at her, leaning against a wall, completely nonchalant. She trembles.

"Please, he's not — don't —"

"Rat you out?" The redhead suggests, still smirking. "Now, why would I do that?"

Naminé heaves a sigh of relief, smiling over her shoulder at the child. He stares back at her, blinks, then tugs her hand off his mouth and grins back.

Footsteps echo in the near-empty room as Axel approaches. He looks at the child, blinking his green-green eyes at it. It blinks blue-green eyes back and sticks its tongue out at him.

Axel laughs, and Naminé holds her breath. Axel's laugh is unsettling, and she doesn't trust it. The child doesn't seem to, either, because it darts under the table, trying the hide behind her legs.

The redhead shakes his head. "Vexen's got his hands full with that one," he mutters, and Naminé silently agrees. He glances at the child once more, smirks, and ruffles Naminé's hair.

"Take care of him, got it? Hate to see a kid like him go to waste."

Naminé doesn't know what to say to that, but Axel doesn't give her time to reply anyway. He turns, creates a portal, and leaves.

The child rushes out from under the table then, running towards the darkness. He gets to where the portal was right as the darkness dissipates completely. Naminé walks over to him right as he starts to cry.

She can't understand why he'd be upset about retreating darkness, but she nevertheless bends down to hug him. "Shh, it's okay... Nothing's wrong, see?"

He clings to her, holding tight to her dress, and for a minute she lets him. Then she gently pries him off, gives him a sweet smile. "You should probably go back now." He tilts his head; she frowns slightly. "Back to Vexen. Back to where you came from. Don't you remember?"

His face scrunches up but he nods. He also makes a grab for her dress. She holds his wrists away, shaking her head. "No, you can't stay here. You need to go back. Okay? Go back to Vexen." He still looks stubborn, so she adds, with as much feeling as she can fake, "Go back to where you came from for me, alright?"

He seems to understand her, as he pulls away and goes for the door. She stands up and watches him, trying to forget the flash of hurt on his face.

When she sees him next, he doesn't remember her. She knows he doesn't, because his eyes slide right over her before he confronts the Organization members. She could have told him not to do that, could have told him to stay quiet, but he gives her no opportunity. He jumps right in, and Larxene makes him pay for that. The above-ground members are used to Naminé and her meek silence; they will not tolerate any rebelliousness in a tool.

He's broken only minutes later, throat raw from screaming, and Naminé notices that he bleeds like a real person would. By now she knows he's a copy, a fake, a clone of Riku. She's told to make him believe he's real, though; she almost informs Larxene that he already does.

Larxene knocks him out before dumping him in front of the witch; she doesn't trust the younger Nobody to do a good job if he's conscious enough to plead, to beg, to look at her.

"Never look them in the eye, witch. It makes you weak."

Naminé nods, waiting until Larxene is gone to disagree. "I can't feel compassion anyway," she murmurs, "so what's the point?"

Still, looking at the not-child sprawled at her feet, she feels a tug at her not-heart. She ignores it, of course, and opens her sketchbook, but she doesn't forget it. She _can't_ feel compassion for this creature, this artificial boy, or else the Organization will come after _her_. They need both tools, but she doesn't doubt they have ways of making her suffer if she disobeys them. Ways that would leave her still able to work for them. She shudders.

Rewriting four-five-one-zero's memory is nothing like rewriting Sora's. He has so little for her to erase, and erase it she does; Sora's memories she simply set aside, as they were too strong for her to get rid of them completely. She is penciled in over Kairi's image, but the original outline still remains.

Not so with this clone. She can be everything to him; there is no other girl there for her to replace. She gives him a promise, a purpose, a personality, and all the while she knows she's killing the child who wandered into her room only hours ago. He's grown so quickly, too quickly, and he's ridiculously easy to manipulate.

Axel comes in some time later, long after she's done. He takes one look at the copy before glaring at her.

"I thought I told you to take care of him."

Naminé quakes, eyes wide. "But — I did, he—"

"If that..._thing_," Axel interrupts her, "can still stick his tongue out at me, I'd be surprised."

She reaches for her sketchbook. "I can make—"

"That is _not_ what I meant." Axel grabs her wrist, squeezing it until her eyes water. "I hope you know what you've done."

She looks up at him, not even trying to pull her wrist out of his grip. "What have I done?"

The redhead's smirk is a nasty, vicious, humorless thing as he shoves his wrist back at her. "You killed your brat."

Shaking her head, she leans away from him, looks at the copy that's still sprawled out on the floor. "No, I didn't..."

"Sure you did," Axel takes a step back, then another. "I wonder how you'll be able to look Sora in the eye, knowing that. Bet he won't like it."

She knows he's telling the truth, Sora won't, what she did was a gross betrayal and Sora would never do something like that, especially not to someone who trusted him. Axel walks out of the room humming a jaunty tune, leaving a sobbing witch and a broken replica.

_**.one) for the Aggressor**_

She meets Sora long after that, and by that time she's murdered four-five-one-zero until he's become perfectly Riku.

What happens after is a blur: the replica shows up unexpectedly and the next thing she knows, he's aiming a fatal blow at Sora. He won't listen to her. In a panic, she does the only thing she can think to do: she kills him again.

His heart isn't like Sora's; it's not strong and bright and warm. It's dark and pretty cold, and it shatters like glass when she attacks it. All the little shards with her image are crushed, all but one, and she's a little surprised but disregards it. One shard won't do much, and his heart's not even beating anymore.

She tells Sora everything, leaving out her encounters with the child-replica. He accepts her story, and accepts _her_, and while she feels loved she also feels horribly guilty. He would _hate_ her if he knew the whole truth, but she can't handle his hate. She stays with her mess, her responsibility, the poor broken boy she mishandled so very badly.

Marluxia kidnaps her after, and she loses track of her charge. He doesn't lose track of her, though; in fact, he comes to her rescue, taking on Marluxia for a promise he knows now is fake. When she peeks into his heart, she gasps. The tiny shard, the only substantial memory he has, seems to have mimicked Sora's heart: it's bright and warm and oh-so strong. She stares in awe at the power of faith alone, and knowingly misplaced faith at that.

After Marluxia's defeated, the replica takes his leave of them. Naminé keeps a straight face on for Sora.

_**.zero) for Nothing**_

Inside, though, she was crying. Crying because Axel had been right, crying because she had failed, crying because she knew four-five-one-zero was going to die sometime soon and crying because she could do something about it but knew she wouldn't.

_**.ten) for Rebirth**_

Naminé draws, and draws, and draws, and she pieces together a nice, happy, safe little life for Roxas. It's not _his_ perfect life, though; it's far too boring for him, and so she draws a new personality for _him_, and suddenly he's boring, too.

She has to erase a lot, silly little mistakes that leave outlines on Roxas's new, fake memories. They aren't outlines of his old life, though: he, like the replica, has precious little of that. The outlines are of Castle Oblivion, are of white halls and of sketches and sometimes she _really_ slips up and draws Axel into Roxas's memories. Those she erases hard, leaving an angry, raw spot where he had been, and she worries over what that does to Roxas's psyche.

But as much as she draws for Roxas, and as hard as she erases, she can't quite get the stain of a silver-haired child out of her sketches, and she thinks that maybe this perfect, boring life would be better suited to the replica, who would have appreciated these friends and this town and watching a sun that would never, never set.

She draws Roxas in the replica's image, and he doesn't quite fit, but she's sure that it's the thought that counts, and maybe, just maybe, the replica will forgive her for what she's done.


End file.
